30
Wednesday, July 31, 2019 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
LOGGING: Project is part
of broad program on
Sisters forests
area was hit hard by mountain
pine beetle infestation and the
2012 Pole Creek Fire, leaving
dense areas of standing dead
trees.
<This is where the fire
was stopped or held for Pole
Creek,= Orange noted.
A commercial firewood
sale is bid out exactly like
any other timber sale, Orange
and Elpi explained. Prior to
the Pole Creek Fire, the area
was a popular site for pub-
lic firewood cutting. Orange
explained why the Forest
Service decided to bid the
project out as a commercial
sale rather than opening up the
area for public cutting.
<We can regulate slash
cleanup; we can regulate
stump heights; we can regu-
late safety of cutting near one
of our busiest roads,= he said.
The project is designed to
minimize impact on the land-
scape. The sale requirements
allow for only 20 percent of
the sale area to be disturbed
by logging operations. The
project area runs to a depth
of 1,000 feet from Road 16.
Continued from page 1
the area.
Sisters Ranger District
Timber Sale Manager Steve
Orange explained that the cur-
rent effort is <removing large
amounts of dead fuel adjacent
to one of the busiest recreation
roads on the District.=
Forest Road 16 leads from
Sisters to Three Creek Lake.
Orange also notes that
<providing quality firewood
4 and forest products gener-
ally 4 is something that is an
asset to the community.=
A side-effect of the proj-
ect is that it opens up some
impressive mountain vistas
west of the roadway.
The project, which allows
cutting of lodgepole up to
21 inches in circumference,
is part of an overall effort to
improve ecological health and
reduce wildfire risk along that
corridor. Lodgepole pine in the
PHOTO BY CEILI CORNELIUS
Logging contractor Dave Elpi, right, works with Steve Orange of the USFS
to make sure that his work is within parameters of the project.
A tradition of excellence,
ce, trust
t ust & service
se ce
PHOTO BY CEILI CORNELIUS
The Melvin Butte Project on the Sisters Ranger District has opened up vistas along Forest Road 16, removing
lodgepole timber and providing for better conditions to fight potential wildfire.
There is a detailed plan lin-
ing out how far apart skidding
trails have to be and there are
only three landings along the
2.5-mile stretch where logs
are stacked to be limbed and
bucked for hauling.
<I9m skidding a long, long
ways,= Elpi said.
Elpi is operating a two-
man crew <when it9s not me,
myself and I,= hauling the
logs to the two-acre Sisters
Forest Products woodlot along
Highway 126 where they will
be processed into firewood.
While the current work is a
straight commercial sale, Elpi
said he particularly enjoys
working on stewardship proj-
ects, where the focus can
include restorative efforts as
well as timber cutting.
<If you go back in history,
he said, stewardship forestry
dates back to Europe in the
Middle Ages,= he said.
The object was to main-
tain forests as a sustainable
resource for wood and for
hunting and recreation (then,
of course, restricted to the
nobility).
<We as a people benefit
more from stewardship than
from timber sales,= Elpi said.
Orange said that the
Deschutes National Forest
produced about 44 million
board feet of timber last year,
about evenly divided between
timber sales and stewardship
projects.
<That being said,= he
noted, <Sisters has favored
stewardship over the past
decades.=
A variety of stewardship
projects based on improving
ecological health and reducing
fire risk have been conducted
in a sweeping arc from the
west to the south of Sisters.
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